Who

Zombies Are People Too

A little while ago, psu wanted to shoot zombies in Left 4 Dead with me so
badly that he bought me the game.

Zombies, you see are an eternal source of friction between the two of us. Put
simply, he loves zombie games, and I do not. I’m pretty sure that if he’s
playing any game – say, Tetris or Lumines – he’s secretly thinking to
himself “Y’know, this is pretty good, but it would be better if it had
zombies.” I, on the other hand, am alternately repulsed, horrified, and bored
by zombie games. Most of that repulsion comes from the obligatory tropes that
the games have: terrible cameras and can’t-run-away-just-like-in-a-nightmare
manueverability.

So it took a while before I was willing to even try Left 4 Dead, and it took
a second session for me to realize that it was a pretty good game. On the
third session, I realized why it was a good game.

Left 4 Dead is not a zombie game. Left 4 Dead is
Counterstrike
where the co-op mode has been made more fun by adding more terrorists but
removing their guns.

We’ve been playing about every other night, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it.
The game, at least in its co-op version, which is all I’ll play, is about a
few simple principles: stick together, have fields of fire with broad
coverage, and be able to concentrate fire when it matters.

The difficulty of the game varies widely within a session. I think this is an
intentional decision. The “basic” enemy zombies, who satisfyingly all look
like people I hated in high school, are all trivial to defeat at almost no
risk, even when there are quite a few of them. This lures you into a false
sense of security. The “boss” zombies, each of whom has a different (and
usually gross) attack can all incapacitate a single player. So the typical
death scenario comes when you get too cocky and allow yourself to be separated
from your teammates.

Personally, I find Left 4 Dead to be a more satisfying shooter than Halo.
This is almost certainly because I prefer cooperative play to deathmatch,
since I have no first-person shooter talent. My only complaint is that the
typical session lasts about an hour, which is perhaps 15 minutes too long for
me. To put that into context, however, that’s an hour where I kept playing
the game, which I think says something about how good it is.

If you’re interested in a game sometime, feel free to find me on
Twitter and send me your gamertag.

Anyway, I just wanted to say: thanks, psu. You have convinced me that there
are at least two good zombie games in the universe.

PS: Long-time readers are invited to guess at what I think the other good
zombie game is.